


jaws that bite

by anstaar



Series: what we can change [4]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Background Relationships, Backstory, Class Issues, Dysfunctional Relationships, Gen, Growing Up, Multi, POV Outsider, Time Period: Reign of Ezar Vorbarra, glittering tinsel of neo-feudalism vs shiny boots of neo-fascism has no winners, thrilling adventures of the rise of a civil servant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26297734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: Long before Gregor leaves his Regency, Hilaire Quintillan sets out to make his mark.In Emperor Ezar's Court, Quintillan soon finds himself watching legends as much as he works to make his own. Few of them seem likely to have a happy ending.
Series: what we can change [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1595479
Comments: 60
Kudos: 23





	1. prologue: a home long left

Alain Quintillan was only sixteen when he crafted the table that was judged a masterpiece worthy of his guild certificate. He was still short of twenty when the sky open and Barrayar was reintroduced to a universe far larger than the industrious young man had ever thought to imagine. But he was not the sort of man to be needlessly distracted by such things. It was said that if there was any peace to be found in the western corner of the Vorville district in those first confused days of excitement and uncertainty it lived in Alain’s steady hands as he carved a wooden toy beside his wife’s table. 

Despite the jokes Alain’s older brother would make – had made in the years before all his jokes were silenced by strange soldiers that came from the stars – Alain does not win his flower through the delicacy of his carving. Flore was not won, so Alain never saw a need to defend his perceived lack of romantic offerings. 

Flore had stood just inside the doorway of his master’s workshop, waiting for her father and Old Michel to finish. She was the same age as Alain. Just a few years before they’d sat near each other during their brief schooling, she had had a better sense for sums, and he had tended to remain quiet in his brother’s shadow. The spring light had caught on a strand of her brown hair that had escaped her cap and he’d felt every one of his fifteen years, time that felt like both nothing and eternity in the same breath. 

She had been the one to cross the space to him, though once the first words had been spoken, neither had faltered in their conversation. They talked of her work on her family’s farm and his apprenticeship and Ethan, who was likely to end up in trouble one of these days. From the beginning, they spoke of the future. Not about the politics of the new Emperor or even what speculation was going around about their Count’s heir, certainly not about what might be heading toward them even now through the stars. Those are not their futures. 

On that new spring afternoon, Flore speaks of the table in her family’s kitchen. It’s in need of repair, again. A poorly made piece, chosen poorly. A kitchen table, she says, should be made of stuff ready to withstand and support the generations that would gather around it. As Alain watches her speak, trying to readjust her cap even as her enthusiasm leaves it even more askew, he listens. They speak again over the weeks and months that follow, though nothing that isn’t respectable. Alain makes no offer until he can come to her free from an apprenticeship. He speaks to her father, straightforward and resolute. He had shown her the table first. 

Their first son is born three years later, before the world changes. By the time Michel starts school, the maps he brings home are very different from the ones his parents had known. The wider world is not the district or the continent but the entire planet. Perhaps it’s fitting that Emperor Dorca has a new hold on the Empire, for the first time they are truly all children of Barrayar. Flore holds Alain’s hand under the table, as they listen to the new generation speak of other planets, but neither of them lets go of their future.

Change never arrives all at once. Count Vorville offers reassurances. Alain was brought up to respect his liege lord. Alain and Flore were also brought up to be sensible, which fit their natural inclination, so they listen closely to the men who come back from the Capital with the important news. Sometimes it’s hard to tell a wild rumor from fact, talk that the Emperor’s imposing new farming regulations might turn out to be false while stories that there are planets where a person can simply put an instruction into a machine and be given a chair that never wears down isn’t merely some fanciful invention of a too open mind. But the farmers still go out in the fields as they always have, and orders still come in for a reliable carpenter. 

Things change, they endure. An invasion comes and it takes. It takes brothers and friends and parents and brave Count’s sons and their own brave son. The table lasts. Three more children survive to eat and argue and grow around it. There are some winters where they don’t eat, Cetagandan lords stand (in image, with a fierce guard set up around the temporary transmitters) in the village center to claim the suffering is imposed by those Barrayarans who are determined that everyone should bleed for a world far worse then they’re all being offered. Flore sells as little as she can get away with and hides the children when Cetagandan offer ‘opportunities’. Alain hides a bleeding rebel in their cellar, a boy who, only a few months before, had shown up with some fellows to demand their food for the resistance or face the fate of collaborators.

The table bares the weight of the harvest, and the lightness. It sees funeral dishes and early morning groats and wedding celebrations. The first grandson born after the Cetagandan Invasion is thrown back out of Barrayaran space sits on the, chewing on the wooden horse made for his father, as his grandmother hums to herself. 

The family will outgrow the house, but they’ll always be drawn back. Weekend dinners become the time and place for all the important announcements and scandals and arguments. Fifteen years and two Emperors after the war, Hilaire Quintillan’s decision to go away for school will be announced and wondered over there. 

Many decades after that, Hilaire speaks with a Princess about Barrayaran literature. His job doesn’t leave him much time for fiction, even if he had the inclination, but even he knows the stock tale of the boy from the countryside that goes to the big city to lose all those important moral values that the censorship board believes in supporting just as long as they won’t be expected to hold to them. 

Since his grandparents’ table singularly fails to undergo even the smallest bit of dramatic and able to be understood as metaphorical damage to represent the corruption to the soul, Hilaire has to admit to finding the stories all rather unrealistic. There are days he’s tempted to scrape it up a bit, just for the sake of literature, but it’s not disappointing enough to risk his grandmother’s wrath. 

After all, even in the face of metaphor, he would still have to live with himself one day at a time. Just like everyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when outlining the story after The Komarran Gambit, I realized that there were certain things that still need to be set up, so here is the first background piece, focusing on Ezar's reign. The prologue is not particularly reflective of the rest of the story, which is pretty much everyone being terrible. 
> 
> next time: a young Quintillan arrives in Vorbarr Sultana as Ezar does his best to consolidate power in the unstable early days of his reign. Quintillan judges a certain Vor couple, the secret police stand around prominently and there are those who would argue that throwing people out windows was one of Yuri's high-points.


	2. a young man in the big city

The Quintillan family table has seen far more shocking announcements than simply Hilaire Quintillan’s declaration that he’ll continue his secondary education. In recent years, the pleasant kitchen has born witness to surprise pregnancies, unfavorable engagements and long, tiring arguments about what duty required of a man in a time of conflict set against Alain Quintillan’s unusually harsh words about boys who want to throw themselves into the first fight they can find. After two years of keeping quiet as Uncle Jos stomped around the house and his grandmother glared dangerously through dinner had left new topics, even if they were new arguments, still a pleasant change. 

Hilaire’s intentions in general aren’t even a particular surprise. Hilaire has been accused of being too clever for sense by more than one relative, a complaint that is generally understood to have at least of a hint of a compliment underneath. Most of them had suspected he was the type to want extra years of schooling. Most of them also agree that it’s not really necessary, but there’s a certain pride to that. Pride that they can afford the fees and not having his hands working. Pride in Hilaire, and his potential future. 

It’s only when Hilaire explains that he’s planning on going to Vorbarr Sultana, not just the _district_ capital for his schooling, that the fuss really kicks off. 

Hilaire had been the first grandchild born after the war. In Torlen, ‘the war’ still means the twenty years the Cetagandans had spent dug into Barrayar. All there understand that a child born in peace means one born into the last days of Emperor Dorca, the candle always lit under his picture in remembrance. No one calls Hilaire’s niece a child of peace, even though she had been born just three days after Emperor Ezar took the campstool. There’s no candle lit for Emperor Yuri. 

They say in Vorbarr Sultana people now can call him Mad Emperor Yuri without looking over their shoulder for a man with a knife. People in Torlen had generally had more pressing issues than the Emperor. Hilaire isn’t quite old enough to be sure that his memories of Yuri’s ascension are his own rather than just stories he’s been told of the ceremonies greeting the death of Dorca and the celebrations for his heir. He does remember years of rote prayers, and the stern lecture he’d gotten when he’d asked why they had to pray for the health of the Emperor and give him thanks when he’d heard his Uncle complain of policies that favor families the Emperor likes. Hilaire’s da would never do anything like that, which he had thought was a strong argument but had been told he should never say in school. 

Count Vorville had supported Emperor Ezar so Hilaire’s teacher had bravely taken down Emperor Yuri’s picture in the classroom. Hilaire had been old enough not to question the bravery of such an act in a village unlikely to see any imperial troops looking for traitors. He’s also old enough not to comment that what they’d said then was that it was Prince Xav who the Count supported. The teacher had explained the righteousness of this easily. 

Quite a few people had been rather amused at the reports that the Emperor had had his Privy Council thrown out a window. No one had offered a clear explanation of what they’d done, as council members or to deserve such a death, but a job in government is probably a mark of some guilt. Going after your own family was a far darker rumor, one that had taken time to be confirmed as truth in part because it was hard to conceive of. It was a crime against both family and the blood of the Emperor, such things aren’t supposed to happen. 

Those who had had a more extensive historical education than most might acknowledge that it was the sort of thing that had happened with some frequency. But that had been a different time. It is a story out of the bloody centuries. A story of before Barrayar had faced outside attack to teach them of the importance of unity. A story that was definitely not acceptable from a man who didn’t even have an heir. In Vorbarr Sultana they whisper that Yuri, when pressed on his decision not to name an heir, had claimed that it was unnecessary as he would never die. It’s said that he had gone after those that shared his blood in belief that others would choose to end his eternal rule in their favor. But in Vorbarr Sultana, you never know who has started a rumor. 

In Torlen, Hilaire had been more interested in the tales of Emperor Ezar’s latest school reforms and incentives. The older people of the town had shaken their heads over the radicals that have clearly been allowed to speak too loudly. The Emperor has more important matters to focus upon, and perhaps if he didn’t have wild-eyed revolutionaries talking about schools he would be able to hear more about the violent bands that still act with a free hand in far too many rural areas. 

Hilaire eats his meal quietly, after having said his piece, letting his relatives wail over the many dangers of the capitol. Both to his body and his soul. He’s not unmoved by their concern, but he’d been well aware of what reaction he’d get. Besides, he’s not the type to let a little sobbing about moral degeneracy put him off his bread and honey. Even at fifteen, he’s not the type to let it put him off his plans, either. In the end, either he’ll go with their support or he’ll go alone, and they’re too aware of his stubbornness to think that he won’t. 

There are still some tears kept in reserve for his departure, along with stern words about obstinate boys who bring pain to their family. But he knows there’s pride in that lecture, too. The Quintilians are a stubborn family, they’re almost as sure as Hilaire that there’s nothing the capital can throw at him that he can’t stand.

* * *

The reign of Emperor Ezar is still new, but far from untested, when Hilaire arrives in Vorbarr Sultana. Here he does see signs of the last war, in both the buildings and the people. As a concession to family fears and good sense, Hilaire lives with Young Michel, who had never lost his nickname even after Old Michel’s death and his departure to join the Vorbarr Sultana guard five years before. Michel is a cousin, and meant to provide a shield against the loose morals of a big city, so Hilaire carefully neglects to mention his roommate had helpfully informed him that he knows the way to every whorehouse in the city before Hilaire had even finished putting down his bags.

Hilaire takes more advantage of Michel’s recommendation for drinking establishments. Vorbarr Sultana is full of people who are quick to talk about what ‘everyone knows’, and Hilaire is ready to listen. He has no doubt what everyone knows is just as full of superstition and rumors as it had been in Torlen, but that doesn’t make it any less useful. 

People in Vorbarr Sultana enjoy talking about politics, even, or perhaps because, everyone knows of Ezar’s spies. Hilaire quickly finds quite a few who are even happier to talk about it to a boy from a backwards part of a farm district who knows how to keep his mouth shut in the face of careless insults, can stand up for himself in the face of direct insults and has enough money to buy a few drinks. He just as quickly learns that their interest in talking about political figures doesn’t mean they actually think any more about politics than the farmers back home who considered it Count Vorville’s duty to tell them if they needed to think about the Emperor. 

Hilaire learns much, some even at school. He finds old textbooks that talk about Emperor Yuri’s heroism in the war that are marked for destruction and new books that talk about his madness in the slaughter of his own family. There are few remarks about the families Yuri had given favors and even fewer on his network of spies and informers and secret police. After all, everyone knows of Emperor Ezar’s spies. It turns out there are some places on Barrayar where people had revolted not just against Yuri but against the very system that had allowed a monster at the top to be cut apart by a man whose claim was so shaky that he had to marry the half-sister of the man he’d killed. Those are places to be mocked even more than quiet provincial villages that produce strapping young men like Hilaire to star in jokes.

Hilaire is a sensible sort of young man, but not so much that he doesn’t enjoy the edge bitterness that creeps into some of those jokers when he advances in the class rankings. After all, if his ambition didn’t outstrip his sense, he would likely be back home. He knows what he wants, and he doesn’t have any interest in exchanging that for a life he could have far more easily. He works hard. He doesn’t have enough time for questioning whether the easier life he’s discarded could be a better one.

* * *

Hilaire gets the job as a clerk from a classmate’s recommendation. The other boy is not a close friend, but he’s honest enough to put Hilaire’s name to his father as one of the best. Hilaire makes sure to remember that. Willingness to put sense over ego is a trait to be flattered, and Hilaire is honestly grateful for the work. It’s his first step into government, his first chance to get to see some of the figures that have starred in the rumors he’s collected since even before he arrived in the capital. 

Marking the tallies, Hilaire is quick to memorize Counts and heirs, and the way they’re most likely to vote. He watches them behind his flimsies, generally going completely unnoticed in return. He’s just another prole boy, refined enough not to gape and therefore not even interesting enough for mockery. 

The Emperor is an impressive sight. He’s not the most striking man on purely physical grounds, but even after Hilaire had realized that he didn’t stand much taller than his wife, the sense of command is almost more impressive. If Ezar Vorbarra could fit easily into a crowd of common Vor, it’s that he doesn’t that has to be admired. The Empress appears far more rarely. Hilaire wonders if she wonders how many who look at her are looking for traces of her brother. He wonders which of them see that ghost in their marriage bed, though he never lets those words out of his head. 

The Crown Prince is far quieter than Hilaire remembers his own younger siblings being at that age, which he supposes is natural for a boy expected to behave through sometimes endless seeming ceremonies. 

It takes some time before Hilaire first sees Prince Xav. They say he was a frequent visitor in the old days. Which is reason enough to avoid visiting the court of the new Emperor. Prince Xav has always made his support for Ezar clear, standing more blatantly as advisor and confident might quiet some of the rumors but would be sure to make others spring up. They say that Prince Xav had remained one of the few people that Yuri had held close, even as he hadn’t escaped his violent paranoia. They don’t say if Xav had loved his brother, but Hilaire never sees him look directly at his half-sister – though she is even less likely to be there if he is. Once, he had come with a cheerful little boy who had seemed to actually play with the Crown Prince. Hilaire doesn’t see the Prince’s youngest grandson at Court again until he’s old enough to swear his own military oath to the Emperor. 

Of course, most dangerous of Hilaire’s people watching, he sees Captain Negri. The man who sees and hears everything, the man who acts only for the Emperor. In the early years, it’s strange to see a prole so close to the Emperor. The whispers about him are already quiet. The more respectable name Negri a consequence of the Emperor’s service with the intimidating Count Vorkosigan, when High Vor and prole broke bread and spilt blood together, creating deep bonds of respect and trust. The low minded suggest other forms that bond might take, ones that give another explanation for the Emperor’s distance with his wife and the existence of only one heir. A Vor might see a prole as a prole, but Hilaire is well aware of the sharp snobberies and Negri is not from any sort of respectable family. 

Hilaire thinks that Captain Negri seems to be good at his job. During his first years in Vorbarr Sultana, in a school where achievement is supposed to come before family connections and in a job where he sees plenty to prove that an incompetent with a good name can _start_ further than someone actually capable could even dream of – Hilaire has grown more likely to judge on capabilities than on character. Later, he wonders if that makes it slightly ironic that it is through Captain Negri that he first meets Stepan Grishnov.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: getting a political education
> 
> also, Emperor Ezar's motivational poster: When Life ~~the death of your enemy~~ Gives You Secret Police, Make Use Of Them


	3. records of a new age

Quintilian never keeps a diary. Even his appointment book could be called terse. When the subject is brought up, much later, by friends with an interest in historical records, he usually dryly points out that he was not raised to the habit. Those who know a little more about his family can easily find the joke in his method of noting visits, but the lack of chroniclers among his ancestors is true enough. Those who know about the times tend not to push the questions further. 

Hilaire doesn’t refrain from recording his life out of any form of self-effacement. He has no interest in removing himself from history, only to be found in silences. He believes in the work he’s done – well, he can believe in a large enough percentage of it to hold off most regrets – but he’s not ashamed that pride and ambition play their parts in driving him forward. A man’s work can speak for itself, but he has his plans for a memoir to help people listen. Something to fill the time that retirement will leave empty. Over the years, he’s kept up a collection of his letters and official transcripts to help him with this potential project. But never a diary. 

The explanation Hilaire gives is true, if not entirely honest. When he was young, he was never particularly drawn towards writing. It wasn’t until he’d been in Vorbarr Sultana for some time that he really became aware of that particular hobby so popular among the Vor caste. 

Of course, in those years, as Emperor Ezar held Barrayar together through its cultural convulsions, many proles adopted Vor customs. They took up the haircuts, writing habits, official positions and sexual scandals that had once been restricted to their social betters. At least, so wrote Charles Vasilev, another prole from a country family who made his way to the capitol and then high in the new bureaucracy, but who spent far more time recording his observations than Quintilian. Hilaire considers Charlie one of the better friends of the company he carefully maintains after school, but he didn’t have to read his diary to quietly label him as part of the class of prole who hold a rather defensively aggressive attitude about morality as a form of snobbishness. It can be tiring, on occasion, but, on the whole, Hilaire finds it more appealing to deal with than the opposite. 

Hilaire doesn’t write that down. He doesn’t make note of varying hypocrisies or attempts at definition or the struggle between old values and the desire to grab onto anything new. He doesn’t speak of it, either. If it’s risky to say, he’s far too sensible to commit it to screens that anyone could read. By the time Hilaire seriously considers the worth of a diary, he’s seen more than enough to decide that he doesn’t want to spend his time crafting a safe narrative. He keeps his own council, without regrets. Still, there are moments when he thinks it might be useful if he was the type to record his first impressions of people, before they are forever shaded with what comes after. It’s rarely more than a moment, after all, it’s who they become that ultimately matters.

* * *

Hilaire is thinking of marriage the first time he really takes note of Stepan Grishnov. Generally, marriage isn’t a subject that occupies much of Hilaire’s attention. He’s young, and free from any entanglement that might push his mind in that direction. 

Despite the jokes common in the city, if he were back home – as Torlen remains, even half a decade on from when he last really lived there – he would still probably be unmarried. Unless he had someone special. Of course, offers of any respectability go through an intermediary, but things are generally already understood by the parties uninvolved before they make that public commitment. Otherwise things could be highly embarrassing. There’s the occasional marriage meant to bring together a better land claim, but even there, the young people in question tend to have been pushed together over the years. It’s a matter of good sense, and, usually, good intentions. 

Hilaire suspects his parents sometimes wish that he had had a young sweetheart. They might hope that he plans to return in a few years to ask for help in finding a bride, even if he intends to live in the city still, something to tie him back home. It’s a common practice among those who leave the countryside for work in cities. Michel is planning on that sort of match. Quite frequently, the wife and eventual children are left back home, a refuge from the city that can be kept much better than they would be for the same salary in a place like Vorbarra Sultana. 

Hilaire has no plans to return home, now he’s moved from school to full employment. Marriage features somewhere in his future plans of establishment. It’s partly a reflection of his warm memories of his childhood and the expectations that had been formed there. There’s a part of the dream that’s based off far colder calculations of the use of a wife in the social side of a government man’s career, but he shies away from thinking too hard of marriage fully in those terms. He hadn’t let himself expect his boss’ implied offer, at one of the family dinners he’d been invited to as a young man all alone in the big city, phased as general commentary on the importance of having a woman to keep the home. A wife is just the thing to keep an ambitious young man away from moral pitfalls. Hilaire had his doubts about that, though not ones he’d ever air at the dinner table. 

Hilaire has been careful not to make any sign that he understood the underlying offer. Having to outright refuse would be unfortunate. Still, he’s a little smug that it was made. The implied confidence in him is far more appreciated than the perfectly nice girl who he suspects has as much interest in him as he does her. Or, at least, he hopes she’s uninterested and begs off most of the more casual invitations. 

An offer of attending a high Vor social event is not the sort of invitation is not something a man interested in connections rejects. That it’s an engagement party, of sorts, does bring reflections on marriage to mind, but most people are using it for networking. Not that most of the men in uniform would appreciate being described as doing anything so crass. 

Grishnov is in uniform too, of course. They work in different departments, but Hilaire has seen him before, and he makes note of the people whose names are put in connection to his. Grishnov is older than Hilaire, though he’s not certain by how much. He was old enough to fight for Emperor Ezar against Yuri, and keen enough to use that to advance. There are people who talk derisively about a shortcut of loyalty, but Hilaire finds that sort of bitterness to reflect most tellingly on the speaker. 

Grishnov could almost have sprung from the pen of a satirist writing of Emperor Ezar’s New Men. A prole accused of thinking himself better than a Vor while mimicking their look. That sort of satirist seems to feel discomforted at the idea of not being able to instantly know a man’s family background. It is harder, especially with the advances in medicine and food. Not everywhere, but Vorbarra Sultan isn’t exactly full of backwards mountain people. No one could mistake Captain Negri for Emperor Ezar, but, at a glance, Grishnov might be mistaken as someone born into the military class. If they didn’t know to look to his belt. 

Hilaire finds himself standing near him quite by accident. Grishnov spends most of the party talking with soldiers, his comrades by choice. He and Hilaire are tied together by outside perception. Still, unlike some, when they do talk, there’s no resentment over what is unspoken but well understood. They talk lightly of the couple and a few shared acquaintances. 

When Hilaire arrives home, slightly drunk, he has no diary to record the pleasant conversation with a companionable man. By the time they’re friends, he won’t remember it as their first meeting.

* * *

Captain Negri first introduces Hilaire to Grishnov. It’s a cold morning. It feels even colder, now the interrogation drug has worn off. Hilaire is trying not to think about potential side-effects. He’s trying even harder not to think of the questioning. It had been painless. Effective. Nothing like the horror stories of old-fashioned searches for possible traitors. There had never been anything for him to fear. He knows that. He doesn’t want to think about it. 

Hilaire wonders if he’s in some form of shock. The thought is as distant as the emotion, even as the world also feels almost painfully sharp after the warm bluntness that had been his mind when he’d been under. It had been completely alien. The knowledge that he had been seen like that, examined like that, makes him feel slightly sick. He tells himself that’s the only reason for the discomfort.

Hilaire has always been fully aware of the reason he has so many opportunities. He knows why there are so many new young men, rising so quickly in Emperor Ezar’s government. Yuri had left plenty of empty places, even before Ezar had opened them to a new breed official rather than leave them in traditional hands. Hilaire knows something of the quick turnover and unrest in Ezar’s reign. Hilaire has seen for himself the recent unrest.

Several districts have had a streak of bad luck. Or, as the argument goes, several districts are facing the consequences of Count’s bad management. People are hungry. Conservatives are upset with new policies. There have been accusations of embezzlement and treason. The new recruiting initiatives are bringing in more young men and more complaints from their families. A series of nasty murders have put Vorbarra Sultana even more on edge. After a building collapsed, a builder was killed by a mob, which hadn’t liked being broken up by the city guard. The city guard aren’t happy. There are always rumors. Hilaire isn’t sure when that had started to seem normal. 

Hilaire has become used to much. Still, this is the first time his promotion has come so directly because of someone else’s fall. Hilaire doesn’t doubt his own capabilities. He had never thought much of his superior, honestly. Not in terms of the job. He’s a decent man, but rather slow to catch onto things. Not made for the pace of the work. Hillarie has had to act quickly to stop him from messing up before. He’d recited every time just hours before. 

Hilaire will be better. Hilaire doesn’t have unfortunate connections. Hilaire is loyal to his emperor. He can’t turn down the job. It would be an offense. He doesn’t _want_ to turn down the job. This is what he’s been working for. Barrayar runs on personal connections, on oaths of loyalty. There’s no bitterness to the success. And if there is, he wouldn’t know how to describe it, not that he would ever speak of it to someone. 

Grishnov doesn’t seem to taste it. He works too hard on his image to ever do something like grin or fiddle with his new insignia, but Hilaire suspects that he has to work to resist it. Grishnov does smile at Hilaire, far warmer than Captain Negri’s clipped nod and terse words about department liaisons. Captain Negri still has work to do.

For the first time that day, Hilaire does find a little peace. After all, Stepan Grishnov is like him. When Stepan suggests a drink to celebrate their promotions, Hilaire doesn’t hesitate. They deserve this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next chapter: Hilaire makes and breaks a friendship as Barrayar continues to change


	4. just the candle in the mirror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title comes from 'Letters' in _Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812_, mentions of terrible deaths from chemical weapons, and everyone spends most of their time drinking extensively

For a time, Grishnov is Hilaire’s regular drinking partner. Even at the time, Hilaire is never able to properly explain what that means. No, that’s true, but not honest. Especially at the time, Hilaire is careful to never try to put words to what it means. Later, it would sound like some sort of boast or political comment to say that he once was a drinking companion of the Minister of Political Education, even before he attained that exalted status. 

It is political, of course. Right from the beginning. Everything is political, every choice is a statement. But that doesn’t make anything impersonal, it doesn’t make all the other reasons less important. If anything, Hilaire thinks it might make them more important. 

There are many men Hilaire goes drinking with. It’s well known that man who isn’t ready to go out drinking is one unlikely to go far, but it’s not something Hilaire finds onerous. The circles he travels with have changed, as is only natural. He still sometimes drinks with Michel, if they find another man from their end of the district. He enjoys the familiarity, the shared sentimentality that comes because they know ‘back home’ is a coat that no longer fits instead of despite it. There are still some friends from school he keeps up with, even if he doesn’t necessarily hunt them down. For the most part, he drinks with his fellow clerks and secretaries and managers. Men who get things done. Men who tend to watch their drinks and go home to wives and keep to the carefully middle-class bars. 

Stepan is different. It’s not just bars. Stephan invites Hilaire to drink at his home. They sit together in his study, decanter of brandy on a table between them. It’s in this room that they’re Stepan and Hilaire. There’s both a certain thrill and a discomfort to these meetings. Neither of them are the type to speak of the past, but Hilaire sometimes feels as if he has the clearest glimpse of who Stephan was in this room that would have no place for that boy. Forget hair or accent or posture, this is the only Vor affectation that stands out. It’s almost too revealing, but Hilaire never looks away. 

In general, Stepan is pleasant to drink with at home. Perhaps because he isn’t interested in copying the Vor _that_ closely, they rarely drink to excess. With just a few drinks, Stepan tends to grow more garrulous. He’s good humored and sticks to amusing gossip. He can also take on the attitude of an instructor, a condescension Hilaire doesn’t take well to even in men who aren’t only a few years his senior, and can be almost obsessively secretive, but Hilaire has put up with worse types of smugness. 

It’s not always just them. Hilaire doesn’t mind when other people join them in the study. It tends to make Stepan more prone to lecturing, but it changes the targets. It prevents those too charged moments of silence. It’s a useful way to meet people, Stepan choses his confidants (well, the less sensible of them confide in him, anyway) with skill. They aren’t always people that Hilaire might have chosen, but differences in politics aren’t truly important at these times. Talking with them – just being in the same room, really – makes Hilaire feel sophisticated and grown up, in a way that’s a bit embarrassing for someone who has considered himself grown for several years already. 

Going out drinking with Grishnov is different. The men they go drinking with then are usually younger than those who stay in, Grishnov’s fellow soldiers. Hilaire doesn’t judge him for playing up different parts to different people, he likes to think that he’s nowhere near that sort of hypocrite. He’s not even sure he could say that he likes the private Stepan more. But there’s a different undercurrent with the military men, a suggestion of violence just restrained. It’s made worse by the company. 

Hilaire doesn’t know all the unspoken arrangements that mark who should drink at what bar, but he can see where they’re facing tension. Unspoken rules aren’t laws, so there’s always been some overlap. There are always people who think it a badge of courage instead of stupidity to go drinking in the worst parts of the city when they obviously don’t belong. This is something more complicated. A political officer is still an officer, after all. Most of the time, it’s almost possible not to pick out the differences, but other nights a word or even a misjudged look is enough to draw lines that have an almost audible twang. Hilaire goes home those nights feeling more wound up than when he started. 

Grishnov never lets it descend into violence, but Hilaire starts to suspect that he enjoys the tension. He assumes that it’s about the control. There’s power in being able to keep the violence from spilling over from threat to action. Stepan likes knowing more than other people, he likes being able to use that knowledge to control them. He likes the obedience of the chain of command. Hilaire wouldn’t try to claim these are some of his more admirable traits, but he’s equally aware that he recognizes them in part because he understands the appeal. 

Quintilian does his best to explain things and work as a group, because he gets better results, but he likes knowing that, ultimately, he can give an order and have it obeyed – and he knows he likes it more when he’s delivering the order to someone who, in another time, he’d be unquestionably subordinate to. He knows resentment is dangerous, he’s careful to curtail it whenever he sees it. But there are times he looks into the face of a man who resents him, and it tastes sweet. He has power, the emperors favor, an importance from what he does instead of who he was born as, and it does feel good. 

Hilaire can see himself in Grishnov, and he doesn’t hate the other man for it because he doesn’t hate it in himself. But that familiarity can be misleading. Or, at least, that’s the reason Hilaire settles on for it taking an almost embarrassingly long time to recognize other elements at play.

Hilaire doesn’t hold a particular resentment towards the Vor. Vitya, a former classmate currently doing well in the Ministry of Finance, had once joked that that was what really marked him out as a provincial. It’s not true, but there’s still a certain truth to it. Hilaire hadn’t grown up thinking anything about the Vor. Count Vorville was spoken of respectfully, but not often, and in Vorville were all the Vor. Everyone has their place, and that’s just how it was. Hilaire had never thought of joining the military because that wasn’t his place. Not if he wanted to rise. Even now, he realizes that part of him still believes that there’s something out of place in having a non-Vor officer. Along with that, he has a certain image of what resentment against the Vor looks like. 

Grishnov doesn’t fit the mental picture. He’s obviously not a prole revolutionary, but he doesn’t fit even the less dramatic image. He doesn’t go around complaining about the Vor as a group. Doesn’t consciously try to differentiate himself from them. He doesn’t bristle at working with them. Hilaire’s certainty about Stepan’s feelings is matched with a complete inability to explain just how he knows.

* * *

Hilaire is thinking about Grishnov’s low opinion of the Vor as a class when he meets Aral Vorkosigan. 

The evening had started well, following an uncomfortable afternoon. Hilaire is almost certain that Captain Negri had been joking, or some personal equivalent of joking, about liaison work, but when Ministries overlap, Hilaire is often the one sent to help move things along. He usually doesn’t mind. There’s always a degree of posturing, but Hilaire knows how to wait people out. Still, everyone has their limit and Hilaire had passed his by the third time they’d had the same clearance dispute. He’s not an errand boy and having to walk back and forth between the buildings another two times wouldn’t have helped his temper, even if the junior officers hadn’t obviously found it amusing. 

Grishnov had been distracted through the whole meeting, mind clearly absorbed with some other problem. Hilaire, who’d spent the morning reading reports on the fires, had only just managed to bite back the urge to ask if Grishnov has an important appointment searching someone sock draw that he’s interrupting. It had taken even more control not to kick the Lieutenant after he’d gotten the Minister’s name wrong again. Hilaire’s not sure if he’s more annoyed at the possible insult or simple incompetence. The meeting had felt endless. 

Still, Hilaire knows how to compartmentalize his day. Stepan had offered him both congratulations and an apology for his distraction. Hilaire isn’t about to turn his nose up at the rarity of an apology, which don’t come easily to Political Officers or to Stepan. He doesn’t object to the offer of a drink to celebrate his promotion, either, especially after Stepan promises the Lieutenant isn’t invited. 

“To the public’s health!” Stepan toasts, with a slightly theatrical smirk. “Have you upset someone recently?”

“Shouldn’t I ask you that?” Hilaire says, raising an eyebrow. Stepan mimes taking the point to heart, as several of the officers around them laugh more than Hilaire probably deserves. 

They’d gathered more soldiers to their little gathering after they’d entered the bar, a few faces Hilaire recognizes and others that are familiar in their type if nothing else. It feels like there are more burly young men in uniforms every year. Well, if you can call it a ‘feeling’ when Hilaire has seen the numbers and knows the enlistment rate. 

They’re still toasting the Emperor when a new group of officers arrive. They join in, of course. Grishnov manages to suppress initial tensions with careful openhandedness that is greeted with equally careful comments from the more sober of the officers. Hilaire recognizes them, beyond recognizing their status. 

It’s not the first time Hilaire has seen Commander Lord Vorkosigan. Count Vorkosigan is a man who believes that his heir should have experience with his duties before he has to take up them up entirely. Hilaire had seen him at Council votes with some frequency when he’d been younger. Having spent some time watching Count Vorkosigan, Hilaire had suspected that he might be the sort of man who needed an excuse to spend time with his only remaining child. Hilaire doesn’t spend as much time on gossip as some, but even he has heard that Lord Vorkosigan hasn’t been back there since the dramatic end of his marriage. 

There are still plenty of rumors about that, so Hilaire doesn’t hesitate to label Vorrutyer, and he’s almost as sure about the Vorhalas. He’s less sure of the other two, he’s not even entirely certain that they’re both Vor, but he’s distracted from guessing, and from hearing any introductions, when Vorkosigan slams down his glass. 

Commander Lord Vorkosigan’s toast isn’t quite as good as Stepan’s, but it’s decent enough. Which is rather impressive because Hilaire quickly realizes that the man is astonishingly drunk. He’s half-supported by Vorrutyer, who seems to regard his oratory and affection with equal amusement. It’s not an amusement everyone shares. The possibly-not-Vor officer who had come in with them looks uncomfortable, while Vorhalas downs his own toast rather aggressively. Grishnov looks even more unflappable than usual. Hilaire suspects his mood is improved by the undercurrents. Hilaire’s might have been too, if hadn’t been worried about having a Vor Lord dropped on him. 

Vorkosigan, it turns out, is a more eloquent drunk than his first toast would suggest. His second stars a rather unflattering image of political officers. 

“They never told me we get to do _that_ ,” Grishnov says, lightly. Light, but strong enough to hold his subordinates in check. 

Vorkosigan scoffs. “So damn political. Listen to every word, so you can say exactly what they want you to. Lack of trust is _just_ what we need.”

It feels like a bubble of silence shimmers around them a moment, as everyone in earshot, and sober enough to understand, which luckily isn’t too many, works the implications. From Lord _Vorkosigan_. Vorhalas looks like he’s reconsidering every choice that led him here. Vorrutyer looks like he’s holding back laughter. 

“One of our future Counts,” Grishnov says, once Vorkosigan has been pried away and towards the door. “How… encouraging.” He shakes his head, and then smirks at Hilaire. “I’ve heard that he looks just like his sister.”

Hilaire manages to catch himself before he says ‘Vorkosigan?’ He might have taken the edge off his nerves a little too thoroughly. He’s heard the same stories about the Vorrutyers, and he hasn’t seen anything this night to dispute them. He wonders if Grishnov is trying to shock him by saying it aloud. That would be rather insulting. 

“I think Vorhalas probably preferred the one who didn’t take him out drinking,” Hilaire says, watching the stiff-backed officer speak quietly in the doorway. 

Grishnov’s wry agreement is his victory, the moment worth taking from that night.

* * *

The next time Hilaire meets Captain Vorkosigan, they’re all very sober. Far more sober than he’d like to be after having read the reports. They exchange short nods. Hilaire tries not to think of Vorkosigan’s rather evocative turns of phrase. Hilaire regards chemical weapons with well deserved horror. He wishes he weren’t going to add pictures of it’s affects to that horror, but he doesn’t shirk from his job. 

Vorkosigan doesn’t either. He also doesn’t appear to have slept since the mutiny started. Hilaire can sympathize. What a bloody mess. Hilaire has been awake long enough that he’s gone past creative cursing and into exhausted simplicity. 

He wishes he hadn’t caught sight of Grishnov heading back to his office. He doesn’t want to have this conversation now. He’s not sure he wants to have it at all. But there are things that matter. This is his work, too. 

Grishnov is tired, but full of a coiled energy that suggests some sort of stimulant. Hilaire is too tired to sympathize about the coming crash, and not sure if he should. Grishnov had spent a long time talking to the Emperor, he couldn’t afford to stumble. 

“Damn idiots,” Grishnov says, pacing across the room. He doesn’t look at Hilaire. Is it guilt, or restlessness? Does it matter?

“I think we can all agree on that,” Hilaire slumps into his chair. 

They’re both quiet for a few moments. Hilaire breaks first. He doesn’t have the training. 

“The Political Officer joined with the mutineers.” 

“He did.” Grishnov sighs. “There’s only so much we can do, conditions on the ground affect our officers as much as any other man.” 

Hilaire doesn’t slump lower, but part of him gives up. He doesn’t know what he wants. Stepan won’t admit to anything. There might not even be something to admit to. Hilaire shouldn’t ask him to. They’re in the damn ministry. There’s no point in saying that the use of chemical weapons will have wiped out any sympathy the mutineers might have been able to gather, otherwise. They both know. And even if it had been suggested by someone who’d know that just as well, they’d still gone along with it. What do those details matter to the dead?

What’s important is moving forward. There's no going back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> also, an important characterization note: by this point Hilaire is in his mid-to-late 20s, over 6 foot and built like a Soviet Propaganda Poster of The Farmer.


	5. welcome to the new age

Hilaire goes home three months before official mobilization is set to get into full gear. There’s nothing to mark the visit as unusual for his family. He travels to Torlen when he can, if not always as often as his family would like. There’s always a list of important weddings, funerals, and name-days that he’s graciously forgiven for missing. All the years that have passed and it’s still home. His mother clucks her tongue when he says as much, telling him that won’t change until he finally settles down with a woman to make his own home. He doesn’t try to argue the point. 

It’s strange to be back in the countryside. From the flight, Hilaire knows that change has come to the district. Settled in the village he was born in; change can feel like a dream. He feels so far from the war, which has been all consuming even before it’s begun. Especially before it’s officially begun. 

When Hilaire had received the request to join in the planning for the eventual invasion of Komarr, he had fully realized how long they’ve been preparing for this war. Looking around the room from where he was seated a little behind the Minister, it all felt like a culmination. It is this war to come that had sealed the choice of Ezar Vorbarra as Emperor. He was the candidate ready for what was to come, who had both the drive and the will to see the promise fulfilled. 

There are rumors that Serg is not Ezar’s first son. They say that there were once other children, long dead at Cetagandan hands. There are even some that say that the lost records of those years hold other relationships, that he had been married to a woman who was far from appropriate to his rank, and that holds the true secret of Captain Negri’s unshakable loyalty. Hilaire doesn’t think the Emperor needs these excuses of sentimentality. The war had taken enough. Count Vorkosigan sits as proof that the Emperor has a well-known personal attachment. Though there are times when Hilaire thinks there are plenty in the room who hate Komarr even more than Cetaganda. 

Barrayar has been reshaped for this war. Listening to the plans, every thread seems to tie together. The endless striving towards modernization: standardization of industries, the power of the Ministries, the growing number of soldiers who come from Count’s districts to become Barrayar’s defense. This is their generations war, born in the last generations awareness that victory over the Cetagandans was only a temporary measure. Hilaire is part of something bigger than even a planet. 

In Torlen, life isn’t lived for a grand pattern. It’s not separated from the grand specter to come, of course. There are two nephews and a number of cousins serving in the military. There’s even a niece in the woman’s auxiliary, something that’s gone over with a certain amount of uncertainty mixed with the pride. Hilaire feels a faint comradery, his family still tends to speak of his work with the same mixture. But life is focused far more on the agricultural patterns of the district, as it has been for generations. That now people can sit and complain about tariffs on trade through Komarran controlled wormholes doesn’t seem to disrupt the deeper story. 

The whole family eats dinner together. Two of Hilaire’s uncles get into an argument over rumors of planned changes to the currency. The potentially nasty fight is put to rest when everyone turns to cheerfully insult Hilaire’s job instead. Hilaire takes the teasing easily. His relations might not understand why he can’t be like his aunt’s friend Francine’s boy, who works for the Count and had helped out with an unfortunate divorce, or Armand, who had transformed from an unfortunate boy to a _captain_ of all things in the city, but there’s a certain pride in not understanding what he does in his very important job. 

Hilaire could tell them about his work standardizing hospitals and making regulations. He could tell them about university programs and employer networks. He could explain that the endless committee debates eventually turn into more jobs across Barrayar. But they prefer joking that it’s incomprehensible. He could lay it out in straight terms, but it doesn’t affect them here and that gap would be far worse than bad jokes about not being able to settle on lunch without having at least five meetings about it. They want to know if he’s seen the Emperor, how people dress in the big city, if the princess is pretty. Hilaire knows the answers they want.

Hilaire has been in the presence of the Emperor, multiple times. Yes, the Emperor is very impressive. He doesn’t know how people dress in the city, except for the ones that dress like him. Yes, he wears a better tailored suit than this when he can be seen by the Emperor, but everyone is used to uniforms. Yes, the princess is as pretty and gracious as in all the vids. It is good to have a woman’s touch in the palace again. 

“You’ll want to be careful around the princess,” Uncle Gerald says, easily amused by himself even before a few drinks, “You’re no soldier, the prince can’t just send you off honorably to the front.” He laughs off the groans, waving his hand. “Fine lord is all very nice, but women want a man,” he speaks with the confidence of completely unearned authority. 

“Like you’d know what a woman wants,” his mother sniffs, pointedly. Though she displays equal handed betrayal by following up with a wink at Hilaire. “You do have to wonder what they’re feeding that boy. I’m sure he must be very busy, with all these goings on, but everyone needs fresh air.”

Hilaire refrains from pointing out ‘that boy’ is the Crown Prince, and rumor has it that he takes plenty of fresh air. If the city can be considered fresh air. There are things you don’t say. He’s forgotten how to deal with these sorts of casual comments. Claire steps in to rescue him, making sure he has the chance to actually eat. 

When Hilaire had been young, Claire had been his closest companion. She was his sister, and their brother was years younger, but he had plenty of male cousins close enough in age to make up for the gap. But it was Claire he could talk to, who thought of things like he did. Claire who taught him how to climb a tree and who snuck frogs into Leo’s bed after he’d claimed girls were afraid of slimy creatures. Claire who’d been fascinated by examining insects and the role they played in Barrayar’s rough terraforming. But then they’d grown older and Claire hadn’t had time for games. She had to learn about running a household, while he’d still been waved off to run wild with the other boys. He hadn’t thought anything about it, then. It’s just the natural way of these things. 

Claire’s a widow, now. Her husband had been an Armsman, killed in an accident. Hilaire understands that there’s a certain amount of money, but not enough for a woman with three children to live alone. If there was even a place for her, without the husband tying her there. So, she’s back in the house they’d grown up in, a daughter again. She tells him it hasn’t been bad; their mother understands. She’s happy for the children to be closer to family. He can’t make himself ask if this is the life she had wanted. 

Hilaire has to leave the next afternoon, but his grandfather asks to speak to him before he goes. They wander through the fields together; Hilaire can’t avoid noticing how much shorter he has to make his steps to make sure he doesn’t outpace the old man. Grandfather Alain tells the story of the kitchen table. He has told the story many times over the years – though Hilaire had heard less then some of his cousins as he’d never lacked for purpose – but it’s never gotten less long and rambling for repetition. It’s about legacy, but more, about the family and home that had been built with just as much care and pride. 

Hilaire loves his grandfather. He respects him, too. It had been Grandfather Alain that he’d sat beside when studying for his exams. His grandfather had understood that it mattered, had known how to be silent with him in a way that most of his family could never be. He’s proud of his grandson. But listening to the story, Hilaire hears of a different world. Alain Quintilian has never left the district. His life had been shaken by the Cetagandan invaders, but it would have been shaken if they’d been invaded by some rival Count if he lived during the Bloody Centuries. The foundations of his universe had not been destroyed and reformed into something new. He’s proud of his grandson, but he’ll never understand that Hilaire can think of Barrayar something whole and undivided. 

Hilaire hugs his grandfather carefully, even more careful not to let the lightness of his touch show. He makes the old jokes about his failures with a hammer. He assures him that he’s happy. Reminds him of the even older jokes about not everyone being able to find the perfect woman so quickly. He says everything his grandfather needs to hear. When he takes off, he doesn’t look back.

* * *

Planning for the war can feel all consuming, but Hilaire still has time to notice changes in the Imperial Residence. The Crown Prince is a man, now. Hilaire remembers him best as a solemn child, in the years before he’d gone off to school. That Hilaire occasionally has a hard time truly considering ‘twenty’ a grown man doesn’t help the internal shock of suddenly feeling old. 

They say the prince has more of his mother’s look than his father’s. More quietly, they say that means he has more of his late Uncle’s look, as the late Empress hadn’t left behind many images, or many memories of appearances at public functions. But Yuri had looked like his own father, and there’s nothing insulting in recognizing the square face in the portrait of Emperor Dorca. Not that the Emperor doesn’t also have that Vorbarra look. Privately, it makes Hilaire a little uncomfortable to consider the family tree too closely. Galactic medication is making its presence more felt on Barrayar but fears of what can lurk in bloodlines isn’t always settled by the promise they can be erased. The trouble over the gene scans in more remote recruiting stations had been put down, but Hilaire can understand what drove them. 

Prince Serg sits in on the war councils, clearly expected to listen and learn rather than speak. Hilaire can understand the Emperor’s irritation at men who bow their head to his son, as if he’s delivering great wisdom when he repeats some common refrain, but Hilaire understands what drives those men too. Hilaire privately doesn’t think well of the fact that the prince hasn’t shown any interest in matters of state outside of war. The Emperor clearly doesn’t take Serg seriously on military matters. But the Crown Prince has to be taken seriously. He will be Emperor.

Emperor Ezar didn’t grow up with the expectation of taking his seat. He can talk about days spent with the-then-Lord Piotr yelling him into proper military shape with fondness. But that is not the attitude that the Crown Prince expects. 

Prince Serg clearly also doesn’t expect the obvious – at least to Hilaire – restrictions on his actual participation in the war. The Emperor’s heir cannot be put at risk. And, practically, there’s a danger his presence could cause confusion in the chain of command. The Crown Prince must be deferred to, and there isn’t room in the plan for any sudden changes. Besides, however small the risk, Ezar the father no doubt wants to keep his son safe. Hilaire feels a distant understanding of the prince’s sullenness. It’s a hard think for a man in his twenties to understand all the complexities, to see his father as a man – and it must be even harder when that father is also the Emperor. 

Of course, the Crown Prince will have a _public_ command. Much will be said about his character as illustrated by the war. Hilaire is sure that most of it is already written. His bravery, confidence, quick thinking, youthful majority, leadership of men – all ready to be a solid foundation for the Emperor-to-be. Emperor Ezar is sure to have many more years, of course, but, these days, no one could call him a young man. The Emperor doesn’t need to be a young man. His gravity is made all the stronger with his legacy. The sight of the Emperor watching his son with his bride is the pride of Barrayar made flesh and caught in print.

Like his father, the Crown Prince gets married in the uniform of a soldier. Hilaire suspects the prince is always aware that, unlike his father, the uniform is more of an affectation than a reflection of his military credentials. The wedding is simple, out of respect for the sacrifices everyone is expected to make for the war, though ‘simple’ by a definition that would’ve made a young Hilaire boggle. The solemn prince doesn’t seem particularly happy, even on his wedding day. The new princess knows how to smile enough for them both.

Princess Kareen isn’t the most beautiful of the Vor type women who decorate the court, but she’s certainly pretty enough to make the loyal toasts to her beauty gallant instead of mocking. She looks very well in vids. She knows all the essential skills that should be expected of a future Empress. She plays hostess with great charm, everyone agrees. Everyone also raises a second glass in hope for the quick arrival of a son.

* * *

“They’re pushing Vorkosigan,” Stepan said, shortly after Hilaire started attending the discussions on Komarr. They don’t together much anymore, not alone. Neither of them has commented on it. Things change. Of course, even if he had wanted to, Hilaire couldn’t have refused the offer of a drink from the Minister of Political Education. Even in his own mind, he can’t say if he wishes that he could. 

“He’s good at it,” Hilaire said. He had found it rather surprising, but he means what he says. Lord Vorkosigan speaks well and easily. Hilaire had never seen him so, even discounting some of the worst ways he had seen him. Listening to his plans, Hilaire could understand how even a Vor of Vorkosigan’s standing could actually earn his rank. 

“Oh, of course,” Stepan’s mockery was far closer to the surface than usual. Hilaire wondered if he’d already been drinking. “He’s bred for war.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He has a talent for this new kind of war.”

Stephan scoffed. “Vorkosigan doesn’t understand. He doesn’t know what the men need. What _Barryar_ needs.” 

Hilaire had been glad that he had an excuse to leave early, leaving Grishnov to his brooding. But he’s reminded of the conversation when he looks up to see that Vorkosigan has joined him in the corridor, scowling at the door much like he’d probably been scowling at someone behind it.

“Everyone’s so damned hungry for this war,” Vorkosigan says. Hilaire isn’t even certain he’s registered his presence. 

“You aren’t?” Hilaire asks. Perhaps it’s not a question he has a right to address to an admiral, not even if he’d managed to suppress the sardonic edge, but after several hours sitting outside rooms, he doesn’t regret it. 

Vorkosigan looks up at him and shakes his head with a huff of laughter. “Me most of all. No, that’s not true, but not even the most fanatical could accuse me of waving a white flag. It’ll be a hell of a lot better than dealing with our own people or keeping boys focused through endless space maneuvers. It’s a good plan.” 

“It’s _your_ plan, Admiral.”

Aral Vorkosigan has a rather sly smile. It’s unnervingly appealing. “That’s how I know. That’s also why I don’t want to see it rushed by a bunch of politicians eager to put their name all over it.”

“Since there’s no chance of my name going anywhere near it, I suppose that grants you my full support.” 

“Quintilian of the Interior, isn’t it?” Hilaire hadn’t expected Vorkosigan to express any regret for sharing his opinion on the ministers, Hilaire wouldn’t even necessarily claim they’re undeserved. He is surprised that Vorkosigan knows his name. 

“Admiral Vorkosigan.” It seems safest to stick to the pretense of acknowledging introductions. 

Vorkosigan leans back against the wall, his gaze intense. “I’ve seen some of your work. Health standards. Usable supply lines. Dealing with diplomats. If it goes through, I’d say you deserve to have your name attached far more than that idiot in the West.”

“As much as I appreciate your regard for my colleagues, I’m afraid I’m not prepared to go in and argue that we should hurry everyone as much as possible. It just doesn’t strike me as a reasonable expectation.” Hilaire feels unreasonably proud of Vorkosigan’s quick smile.

* * *

Victory is never assured, but it doesn’t come as a surprise. There’s still much to be done. Treaties to be finalized. Unexpected troubles to popup. Technicalities to be gone over. But when Hilaire sits down in his office, it’s the Minister of the Interior for the Barrayaran Empire who gets to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> women forcible reinsert themselves into the narrative to further problematize the claims of meritocracy under Emperor Ezar
> 
> i mean - there's still a final rise and fall of certain ministries and war parties to go, but the conquest of Komarr marks the end of an era on Barrayar, even as it ushers in a new one as Barrayar becomes a space Empire, and so with Quintilian now Minister it's a fitting end. 
> 
> i'm trying to finish the final story before i actually start posting, so it'll probably be quite some time before that goes up. in the meantime, i'm open to prompts, because writing encourages writing or something.


End file.
